Firmware Upgrade Failure and Troubleshooting

One of the best things about Makerbot is their constant commitment to improvement. The firmware upgrades are a perfect example….but what if your machine does not want to take the upgrade…don’t freat we have the solution ;)

Especially on the older Replicator 1’s but occasionally on the Replicator 2’s (more likely with a Mac than PC) some people have had the firmware upgrade stop mid point. You may then get an error message on your LED screen, or more likely see two rows of black pixels.

There are two solutions we have for you.

1. Using Replicator G

Go into MakerWare and go to Services -> Stop Conveyor, then close Makerware and open ReplicatorG 0037.

Then turn the bot on, in that order.

Now go to Machine -> Connection (Serial Port) and select the appropriate port. If it doesn't show up, hit Rescan Serial Ports, then go back to Machine -> Connection (Serial Port) and select the port.

Next, go to Machine -> Upload New Firmware. Select board version (eg board v1.5 for The Replicator 1, OR v1.7 for The Replicator 2), and firmware (Eg v7.0 - at the time this was written these were the latest versions) You might have to hit the reset button anywhere from one second before to up to five seconds after hitting Upload. The timing might be a bit tricky, but keep trying at it, and you'll get it eventually!

Once that's done, close ReplicatorG and re-open MakerWare, then go to Services -> Restart Conveyor.

Replicator 1 users note: Now, in order to upgrade the firmware on an original Replicator, the process is a bit different than how the prompts say to do it: